


Pinstripes

by canyousayfilm



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, Developing Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-11-19
Updated: 2012-11-29
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:59:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/567249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canyousayfilm/pseuds/canyousayfilm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I’m versatile, darling.”</p><p>“You should have been an actor. You’d have made a hell of a lot more money than you ever will in crime.”</p><p>“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me, you cheeky charmer.”</p><p>“It’s just professional lying with a different name, don’t flatter yourself.”</p><p>“Yes, love, but actors are also typically very attractive, aren’t they?”</p><p>Yes they fucking are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Real Problem with Eames

"The real problem with Eames is that he can't be trusted. Not just because he's fully capable of fooling us, even those of us with eyes for detail, who _should_ in all rights be able to tell, but also because his method is chaotic. He doesn't look far enough ahead—imagines that strategy can be tossed out on a whim, a gut feeling, and fails regularly to remain loyal to the plan. He's worse than you."

Arthur paces in front of the breakfast bar, but Cobb can see that the motion is unsatisfying. Perhaps he misses the sharp sound of his polished shoes against hardwood. The effect of pacing is undermined by socked feet.

"If his methods annoy you so much, don't work with him," Cobb says simply, catching a flung crepe in the pan.

Arthur looks up at him sharply. He opens his mouth as if about to say something, but cuts himself short, taking a seat at the bar. The line of his shoulders is rigid.

"He's an idiot. It's infuriating."

"If he pisses you off so much, why are we talking about him?"

"Why _are_ we talking about him?"

Cobb is amused. He doesn't look up from breakfast because Arthur's tone gives away the petulance he can't quite tuck away. He wasn't sure what exactly drove them from working together three years ago, but their school-boy attitude towards each other was as old as their acquaintance. Sometimes it was better not to ask. Sharing dreams so often resulted in a level of intimacy that supersedes all boundaries. Who knew what dirty laundry they'd strung out on a line together.

"How's Ariadne?" he asked, throwing a glance at Arthur over his shoulder. All he got, by way of reaction, was a raised eyebrow and a frown.

"How should I know?"

"I thought there was something there? When we landed in LA..?"

"Jesus, Cobb," Arthur looked amused now, "she's a child. Besides, her infatuation with you is a massive turn-off."

"Oh come on, she's not infatuated with me."

"Sometimes I wonder how you manage to pass yourself off as perceptive," Arthur said, dry as ashes behind the hearth.

"She has no reason to be infatuated with me."

"Sure, 'cause infatuation and logic go hand in hand. She has the same problem almost every woman in the world does. She thinks she can fix you, heal your broken heart, all that other shit."

"But she's your type," Cobb retorted, pushing a set of plates across the bar at Arthur who looked at them for a moment before deigning to pick them up and head for the table, "virtually the opposite of Eames. And you're not exactly a grandpa yourself."

"Since when do I have a type?" Arthur asked. The question made Cobb laugh and their conversation was cut short when Phillipa came sailing in in her pyjamas, requesting Nutella. Arthur puzzled over Cobb's assumption that Ariadne was his 'type'. She made a good friend, certainly and was brilliant to work with, but certainly not his type. She was a lot like him, shared many of his tastes. He set the last plate down at the head of the table, lined up with the centre of the place-mat and thought about being married and how boring it would be to agree with someone all the time.


	2. Shallow Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We catch up with Eames in the Maldives.

The repetitive, percussive sound of regular waves coming up against the piles of the house—though that would always seem too pedestrian a word for the wooden, waterfowl dwellings that stood on their disappearing sandbanks in the Indian ocean unperturbed by the comings and goings of the tides—underscored the sort of low and muffled jazz music that begged whisky and cigar smoke rather than sangria and cigarettes.

“I’m in,” Eames pushed a couple bills forward on the table and took his toothpick out of his mouth, twirling it between his free fingers. He saw O’Briain’s eyes drawn to it but pretended not to. It was a red herring, a false tell, but it was working exceptionally well until now.

But there was no time for Davies to call, which had doubtlessly been his intention, because there was a soft sound from the direction of the beach and a bullet tore through his skull, bits of bone and blood littering the table before he slumped sideways in his seat and fell to the ground. Everyone dropped their cards and ducked almost simultaneously before another shot rang out, splintering the backrest of Gibson’s chair with a sharp sound.

“What the fuck is this?” O’Briain’s voice reached Eames just before his feet broke the surface of the water. His heart was beating furiously as he propelled himself laboriously through the shallow waves, ignoring the chaos behind him. He heard a choked, wet cry from behind him but didn’t look back. He swung himself into the speedboat anchored at the dock and doubled over to duck under the level of the gunwales. With a few efficient tugs, the ropes mooring the boat slithered into the water.

There was a sound of a bullet hitting the metal hull and he felt it reverberate through the wall of the boat, sending a spike of adrenaline through him. He shoved away from the dock with a grunt and was off in a churning froth of sea-water. He pulled his handgun out of the breast of his jacket, but didn’t stand up because whatever had taken Davies out had been long range and he was helpless.

No matter how many times he’d been shot at, in dreams and in the real world alike, it was always a nausea inducing experience. He risked a glance behind him to see armed figures, outlined by the light spilling from the house, running along the dock in the direction of the beach, an image that was striking in its absurdity against the utopian palm-and-sand background of the island. His own lack of curiosity startled him, the survival instinct leaving him about as inquisitive as a cow with a copy of Camus. 

He tried looking at the dials on the dashboard, peeking up from his crouch and balked when he saw that the fuel tank was registering nearly empty. Eames jumped to his feet, confident that he was out of the line of fire and ran to the back of the boat, his heart sinking as he listened to the engine splutter. Sick dread made the bile rise in his throat when he saw the line of petrol, churned by the choppy surface of the water trailing behind him all the way to the dock. Someone had put a hole in the gas tank. The boat was slowing, nearly dead. He could hear the sound of far healthier motors approaching, could see them coming from the bay where earlier that day there had been sunbathers who most certainly hadn’t been wielding assault rifles.

Helplessly he went through the futile motions of trying to get the motor running again.

He threw one of the seats into the ocean, tugged on the ends of his hair. By the time the attackers caught up to him he was standing on the bow, gun held out in action-hero-cornered-and-desperate stance. His eyes were wild and he swung the handgun from one assailant to the next as they approached, asking himself why they weren’t shooting and failing utterly to come up with something intelligent to say so that his last words might at least be worth hearing.

He swallowed hard when they drew up next to him, the three guns pointed at him having as much of an effect as twelve would have. His mouth was dry, a steady stream of perspiration sticking his shirt to his back as if in some sick irony. He opened his mouth to say something, but no bravado managed to make it out. He set his jaw instead, channeling 007.  

“Mr. Eames, I’m going to ask you to lower your weapon,” one of the men said, his accent impossible to place. 

“Well, go ahead. Ask,” Eames said, thanking his father for having taught him at a young age how to snark in the face of fear.

“Please lower your weapon.”

“You might’ve asked Johnny back there to put his cards down that nicely. I’m sure it wasn’t necessary to blow his fucking face off.”

“Mr. Davies is a known criminal.”

Eames shrugged, feeling insanity steadily climbing up his spinal column, using his ribs as footholds, taking a hold of nerve endings so that he spread his arms out like a madman and pointed out to them, “Are you forgetting that I’m a criminal as well? Where’s my bullet?”

“Mr. Eames, I am going to ask you once more to lower your weapon.”

Eames aimed and fired and a gun clattered into the bottom of a boat while a man doubled over, clutching his shoulder. Something struck Eames in the chest and he staggered back, falling off the hull and into the water.

On the other side of the world, Arthur rolled his weighted die between his fingers before setting it on the bedside table and putting his head in his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to LadySkyelar for giving this one a read through. :)


	3. London, May 2003

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first meeting.

If asked later, the receptionist in the Brixton Health Clinic wouldn’t have been able to say whether or not a man passed through the lobby shortly after two in the afternoon. Perhaps in the short moments he ghosted across her line of sight, she was too absorbed in reminding her husband what to get from the shops for that night’s tea, but the nurse that encountered him on the first floor had no such excuse. Still, if asked, she would only have vaguely been able to recall that he’d been wearing a hat and asked her for directions to the loo. 

Arthur installed himself in the handicap toilet whence he had an impeccable view into the apartment directly across the street after he’d shifted the blind over minutely. By the time Nayar got home, all the audio surveillance equipment was trained on his house and Arthur was sat, a bit gingerly, on the lidded toilet with his laptop. 

The business of surveillance was as comfortable to him as reading a novel. It felt blessedly good to be away from the craziness of Mal and Dom for a few hours, alone without anyone to either question or applaud his competence, or to get in his way. He had already staked out the apartment—it had been a breeze to break in, take his pictures, make his measurements, and get out before Nayar came home from his girlfriend’s to find the place exactly as he’d left it. It was even easier to sit now and catalogue his behaviour, record his phone calls, his conversation with the downstairs neighbour, and gather the fine details that would make their plan infallible. 

Three hours later, he was stood on the step of the house in Chelsea, the chime of the bell falling away from him as if it had taken its strength from the proximity of his finger. Arthur was startled momentarily, by his unfamiliarity with the man who answered the door, into thinking he’d got the wrong house. 

“You must be Arthur.” Full lips stretched into a slightly worrying smile and Arthur noticed, a second too late, that the man who’d answered the door was wearing military fatigues. He went from still to sprinting in a flash, clutching his messenger bag to his chest so it wouldn’t bump against his hip and hopping over the low front wall and into the street. Arthur hadn’t even had a second to register the look of shock on the soldier’s face before he was gone. 

Dom appeared in the doorway next to Corporal Eames just in time to see Arthur rounding the corner, his baseball cap flying off as his impetus met with that of a black cab coming from the opposite direction. 

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Nothing,” Eames said, mystified, “I just answered the door. I think you had better call him. He’ll be in Kent before long.” 

“He doesn’t have a cellphone on him,” Dom said, a little helplessly. 

“Oh listen to you, love,” Eames said, patting his back fondly, “cell-phone. So hopelessly American. Why do you suppose he ran?”

Dom just looked at him pointedly, “Gordon said you were brilliant. I’m seriously starting to doubt that.”

By happenstance, Arthur collided with Mal on the corner of Beaufort and King’s road and she turned him right back around and marched him into Dr. Forsyth’s house, furious with him for making her drop her choux-a-la-crème. 

“He’s going to be our forger,” she said, with a very rude, French finger pointed dangerously close to Eames’ face the moment they’d made it to the kitchen.

“Alright there, Art? “ he was smiling in that frightening way again, as he extended his hand to Arthur, “I won’t bite you unless you want me to.”

They measured each other. Arthur’s suspicious eyes swept over Eames’ uniform, his military haircut, his just imperfect enough to be insolent posture, and his boyish face. He firmly distrusted everyone he met until they proved themselves satisfactory. Eames read Arthur’s brittle smile and the tense lines of his neck with casual interest, as if he could really see something there. 

“I’ll keep you posted.” 

Arthur would realize later that this moment, this meeting, would go on to define their relationship with each other for many years to come. Colonel Eames was a rough, South London lad who approached their relationship in the British tradition of taking the piss at every available opportunity and Arthur was a shrewd, skinny geek from the Midwest who had long embraced the American tradition of sticking up for himself and getting punched in the face by guys bigger and stronger than him. Eames’ baiting was consistently met with Arthur’s acerbic condescension, and neither of them would ever quite figure out what they meant by it. At least not for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks LadySkyelar, you goddess!


	4. Hot Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames has a chat with his kidnappers. The author starts to wonder if she'll ever manage to rustle up enough guts to set the plot in motion.

Eames can still feel the damp on some of his clothes when he comes to, which must mean that he wasn’t out for very long. It’s mostly just the pockets of his shorts, where the fabric is thick with stiches and doubled up on itself. His t-shirt is a little stiff with salt and his scalp is very itchy which would be an easy fix if his hands weren’t secured to the arms of a chair. It took him a moment to register that the swell of the ground under his feet had nothing to do with dizziness. He was on a boat.

The only light was thrown onto his lap and part of the floor by an open window (porthole? are all the windows on ships called portholes even if they’re not round?)—the weightless, silver light of the moon. Eames’ surroundings were all too obscure and monotone to make out; just metal surfaces and the suggestions of pipes, the shadows of heavy rivets. 

Voices came to him from outside, the details of their words worn off by the sounds of the sea. It took him a few moments of straining physically in his chair, as if leaning would make him hear more clearly, to recognize the voices as Hebrew. Hebrew? Eames had vexed many and sundry people in his career but he couldn’t think of a single time he’d got into it with Israelis.

They hadn’t hesitated for a single moment to put bullets through Davies, O’Briain and, most likely, Gibson, and yet Eames was still alive. He didn’t have to be a narcissist to think that that meant they wanted him for something. 

Human nature had him testing the ropes on his wrists and ankles, his bare toes scrabbled desperately against the floor, but all he managed to do was scrape the chair a fraction of a centimeter to the left and cause himself discomfort. Struggling was stupid but it took all of his willpower to sit still. Even if, by some miracle, he managed to wriggle out of the competent knots that restrained him, he would still be on a boat in the middle of the Indian Ocean with approximately ten murderous men with heavy guns. 

It took him less than five minutes to get bored.

“Oi! You lot with the rifles! Mind telling me what the fuck is going on?” He projects his voice toward the open window, but doesn’t shout. They can hear him just fine. The cabin door opens on his right and three silhouettes slouch into the cabin, not bringing any light with them.

“You’re awake, Mr. Eames.” The same voice that had politely requested he drop his gun earlier with the impossible to place, BBC-correspondent-in-the-field accent. 

“Right. If you’re going to kill me, get on with it. I never liked cruises,” Eames barked, more irritated with them every moment. He wished he could reach his totem, because he was starting to think that this was some kind of dream. Maybe he’d never got to the Maldives. Maybe he was still inside Cobb’s crazy Inception cock-up and this was his limbo—but no. It wouldn’t do to think that way. He knew perfectly well that this was real life, and that was just as frightening. Shit. Davies, O’Briain and Gibson were probably all dead. And for what?

“We have no intention of killing you, Mr. Eames.”

“Brilliant. Then you can drop me off in Kerala and let me get on with my life.”

“We’re not going to do that either, Mr. Eames.”

“That’s fucking grand. Let’s just sit here, then, and you can tell me all about how you arrived at psychopathy and I can tell you about my mum’s best recipe for pie.” 

“We are in need of your services, Mr. Eames.”

“Oh will you cut it out with the bloody Mr. Eames?” Eames felt resigned, but he was still maintaining the defiant posture of someone who is pretending to hold onto some scrap of control. “You think this is the best way to get me working for you? By killing my mates?”

Mr. BBC’s face is barely visible in the dark. He’s wearing glasses that reflect the moonlight and make it impossible to get a look at his eyes. His lips mimic his eyebrows, turned down at the outer ends, giving him an expression of perpetual disappointment. Eames can only make these features out because they’re highlighted by the moon.

“Excepting Mr. Davies, who has a truly reprehensible moral compass, your friends are perfectly alright.”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

“Mr. Eames, we are offering you a simple choice. You can agree to do this work for us, or you may disembark from this boat and find your own way back to shore.”

Eames gritted his teeth behind impassive lips and looked down and to the side, mimicking boredom. Too bad the darkness meant the effect was likely lost on his captors. He said nothing. 

“We’ll give you some time to consider your options,” Mr. BBC went on when it became clear Eames was not going to say anything more. 

They left him alone once more in the darkness of the cabin.

His mind went in circles, but every angle he examined his situation from brought him right back to drowning in the Indian Ocean or doing the job. A job he knew nothing about for people he couldn’t identify. It was infuriating. He wanted answers. He wanted Arthur and his encyclopaedic knowledge of everything shady or otherwise on this planet. There was no doubt that Arthur would know exactly who these people were and that, at least, would be a start.

Hours went by. His bones started to ache from being stuck in the same position for so long. It occurred to him that they would most likely kill him whether he did the job or not. Eames tried to think of witty last words, but it was really difficult without context. His poor mum would likely never know what happened to him, but then, that was an occupational hazard. 

When they came in again to talk to him, it was many hours after sunrise and he could see them all far better than before. Two of them were holding their guns very awkwardly, and with his liquid brown eyes, Mr. BBC looked more lost than ever. He was quite dishy in a too-thin, typist’s fingers sort of way.

“Mr. Eames, you must be very uncomfortable. Please, have a drink of water.”

James Dean-sunglasses, probably Mr. BBC’s right hand man, approached Eames, bottle of water in hand. There was no way to drink gracefully when someone else was holding the bottle and James Dean wasn’t making it easy. Half the water went dribbling down Eames’ chin. Thirst was a terrible thing and after God knew how many hours of sweating, with nothing but salt in the air to nourish him, Eames was quite fucking parched. 

“Have you considered our offer, Mr. Eames?” Mr. BBC asked, gripping one of his wrists with the opposite hand. That was a good trick, in a tailored suit, to make your shoulders look broader and the muscles in your upper arm stand out, but this man had none of those assets and Eames had a feeling that wasn’t really the look he was going for. 

“I don’t know what it is you want me to do.”

“It’s a very simple extraction.”

“Why me, then? If it’s just a simple extraction? I have a very specific skill-set, there are loads out there who can interrogate someone for you,” Eames said, tilting his chin up insolently.

“Because we wanted to kill Mr. Davies and you were conveniently close at hand.”

“Way to make a fella’ feel special.”

“Will you agree to it, Mr. Eames? Or shall I get one of my brothers to ready the plank?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. God. I'm not trying to be funny with the titles, I swear. They are hipster titles. As ever, thank you LadySkyelar for your advice.


	5. London, May 2003, Eames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames reflects.

“How do they know you?” Eames asked Dr. Gordon Forsyth over the tea-tray he’d just put down on the little table between them. Gordon looked up from his notebook and took off his glasses.

“It’s not exactly a big community, Alfie,” he remarked, in that mildly exasperated way of his that let Eames know he was interrupting important thoughts. 

“Yes, but you’re a psychologist and they’re criminals,” Eames pointed out, putting two cubes of sugar in Gordon’s teacup and pushing it a little closer to him across the tray, “I don’t know if I like the way Cobb handles things. He’s a bit…mad.” 

Gordon chuckled and put his glasses back on, indicating that this will be the final statement of their conversation, “Don’t let Dominic to fool you into thinking he’s in charge, Alfie, when it’s so obvious Arthur’s holding the reigns.”

It had not been at all obvious to Eames before Gordon pointed it out to him, but once he started watching for it, he saw just how in charge Arthur really was. It was so subtle that he sometimes wondered if Arthur himself was aware of it. All it took, most of the time, was for Arthur to frown at just the right moment, or to push a piece of paper away, distancing himself from some decision, to make Cobb reconsider it. There was no question of Cobb’s brilliance, but it wasn’t all his own. If Mallorie was his inspiration, then Arthur was refinement, and, when it was necessary, the voice of reason. 

Eames watched him with that fascination Gordon had stirred in him over years of encouraging him to observe and analyze strangers on the street, to try and understand them. In the eighteen days it took them to get the job done, Eames went from fascinated to infatuated on a level more intellectual than he’d ever known. 

He was relieved when it was over, when they were sending Nayar on his merry, unaware way, all of them shaking off the dizzying aftereffects of the somnacil. 

“It was a pleasure working with you,” Arthur said, shaking his hand, after Cobb and Mal, on the sunny pavement outside of the cinema. Eames grinned and put his hands in his pockets.

“I know,” he said, not even waiting for the eye-roll before he turned on his heel and ducked into the crowds heading for a tube station, burying himself underground along with his inexplicable disappointment that nothing had happened.


	6. Vancouver, January 2004

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some flirtation.

Arthur and Dom had had a conversation over their breakfast of cheese on toast on the floor of the hotel, while Mal drooled on her pillow, about what they needed to do that day. It was a short list consisting of meeting up with an Albertan neurologist who had Somnacil to sell them, and getting Eames on board. Apparently, he was in Vancouver for another job of a completely different kind. Mal only knew because a friend of hers, French actress of little enough success that she was taking supporting roles in Quebecois films, had told her about the charming Brit who had fucked his way through half the cast of the movie they were making—regardless of gender.

“Il s’appelle Eames,” she had said, “mais je ne sais pas si c’est son pronom ou son nom de famille. Seulement Eames.” Being a lesbian herself, Mal’s friend wasn’t as impressed with him as some of the other people she worked with. 

When they had started talking, Dom spoke as if it were understood that he would be meeting with Eames while Arthur took care of the Somnacil, but it only took as long as three slices of toast for him to be saying, “You should go instead of me. I really wouldn’t mind meeting this Luke Taylor and—”

“Don’t you think you have a better shot at convincing Eames to join our team?” Arthur cut in, he was smoothing the hem of his trousers, inspecting the stitching. The angle of Dom’s eyebrows reached seagull-about-to-land levels.

“No. I think he listens to you better than me. I don't think it’ll take a lot of convincing either way. I know you don’t like him that much, Arthur, but if you go with him, you might even find out what kind of shit he’s been getting up to over here. You’re right that it’s probably something shady and—”

“I didn’t say it was shady,” Arthur said, “I just said I heard from Glabolev that he’s had his fingers in a few different pies since he was discharged.”

“But we know what it means when Glabolev says that and whatever you say, we both know damn well that Eames thinks I’m a moron half the time. No. You should go see him, and I’ll get the Somnacil.”

“Fine if you’re so adamant about it,” Arthur said with a shrug, smoothing the hem of his trousers flat while Dom’s brow relaxed.

“Good. I gotta take a leak.” 

Arthur tracked a number to call Eames easily and told, rather than asked, him to meet for a late lunch in Fairview Park at a place with a nice view of the bay.

“A pub and a pint for lunch?” Eames said by way of greeting, putting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. He was earlier than Arthur had expected and had rather crept on him, but Arthur wasn’t the sort to give away his surprise. 

“It came well recommended.” He stood for a handshake that Eames turned into a tight hug, “And I’m sick of all this organic, vegetarian shit. This city is fucking crazy.”

Eames laughed and they took their seats across from each other. Arthur looked down at his glass of beer, tilting it so that the foam touched the lip.

“Well, I must say,” Eames sounded very different, somehow, but Arthur couldn’t quite put his finger on it, “this is a delight.”

“Hmm? The pub?”

“No. You. Who knew you’d come all the way to Vancouver just for a lunch date with me?”

“I think you know perfectly well that the proposition I’m going to make to you,” Arthur watched Eames’ lips do something salacious, and rolled his eyes, “is that of a job.”

“Pity. You here with Cobb? Do you always work with him and his girlfriend?”

“No, not always. And Mal is leaving today. She has an exam to write in Ithaca.”

“How come I’m Eames and he’s Cobb and you’re Arthur?” 

“Because my last name is Bufalino,” Arthur said shortly over Eames’ chuckle, “and it doesn’t work nearly as well.”

“Bufalino,” Eames said, mimicking Arthur’s toneless utterance of a name he’d always hated. “Bufalino,” he said again, richly with an Italian roll.

“It probably is Italian,” Eames said, “now if you’re done, can I tell you about the job?”

“I’ll do the job. Italian. Does that mean you’re from Juy-zie?”

“Kansas,” Arthur said shortly, “What are—”

“Kansas! You’re joking. I would not have pegged you as being from Kansas. My, my, Mr. Bufalino. We’ve so much to talk about.”

“We do, but it’s definitely not Kansas.” It was hopeless, though. Arthur knew this very well. He’d only known Alfie Eames for a grand total of about a month, but he knew that it was impossible to steer conversations with him anywhere but where Eameswanted them to go. That he always made Arthur talk about himself when he got the time of day was precisely why that so rarely happened.

“Did you grow up in a small town? I bet you did.”

“Not really. We moved a lot.”

“Military family? Did you live all over?”

“No. Not at all. Just Kansas, Missouri and Tennessee, mostly.”

“But you haven’t got the naff accent at all,” Eames said and then leaned close over the table, his knuckles almost brushing Arthur’s pint, “are you ashamed of it?”

“You sound a hell of a lot more upper-class than the last time I talked to you. Does that have anything to do with shame?” Arthur threw back, leaning back in his own chair. Eames grinned like it was the best thing he’d heard all day.

“I’m versatile, darling.”

“You should have been an actor. You’d have made a hell of a lot more money than you ever will in crime.”

“I think that’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me, you cheeky charmer.”

“It’s just professional lying with a different name, don’t flatter yourself.”

“Yes, love, but actors are also typically very attractive, aren’t they?”

Yes they fucking are.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know. I've never really written fanfiction before. I just re-watched Inception and... well, this shit pretty much writes itself. Their dynamic is really easy to expand upon. Maybe this will go somewhere.


End file.
